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Oct 31, 2018

Kara and Desmond Doux

Des is the one showing his belly

Apologies for the quietness when I clearly should be posting kitten pictures.

The past couple of weeks have been extraordinarily rough – I was actually hospitalized for the first time in my life (if you don't count when I gave birth, which I don't). It turned out to be just a bad case of bronchitis edging into pneumonia. I'm home now but still pretty sick. Illness is boring, so I'm going to stop talking about it now.

Honestly, the kittens have been the best part of these past weeks. Kara and Desmond have totally settled into their new home, overcome their dual upper respiratory track infections (kennel cough strikes again) and their personalities are coming to the forefront.

I'll start with Kara, the quieter of the two. When we brought them home, she spent a lot of time sitting back and observing the household, wisely taking the temperature of her new home before settling in. Now that she's comfortable with us, she's turned out to be deeply curious about everything, especially the wires leading to the television, the cursor on my computer screen, and pretty much everything else in the house that she shouldn't touch. She was also the first to discover the windows in the living room that, fortunately, have deep, cat-friendly sills. We put a large cat tree in front of them (a new one – we discarded Fox's) and she spends a lot of quality time there, checking out the neighborhood.

Kara is slightly bigger than Des and has a thicker tail. She also has brown eyes. Honestly, I haven't seen a lot of cats with brown eyes this particular shade. Amber, yes; hazel and green, of course, but Kara is definitely a brown-eyed girl. As you can see.

Kara on the window sill

Desmond has been getting more of the attention, mostly because he constantly demands it and she doesn't. He must have been the runt of the litter and didn't get as much of his mother's milk because he keeps trying to suckle on me. Mostly on my fingers or, more uncomfortably, my earlobe, which would be adorable and cute except it includes loud purring and kneading in my hair and on my face, with claws fully engaged. I looked up information on this behavior, and it's definitely the result of deprivation; Des and Kara might have lost their mother too young, you never know with shelter kitties. The solution is to try and let him nurse, to never yell at him about it, and to give him as much love and attention and security as possible, and it's likely the behavior will stop. So I'm doing that.

Except for that, Des is adorable. He loves petting (she does too, but not quite as much), loves to play, and he often sleeps on his back with his paws over his head. He loves to run across the room and jump on my chest, and then cuddle into my neck. Des' face is more impish than Kara's, and his eyes are green.

Des on the cat tree

They are both talkers, with the subvocalizations and merls and the purr-meows, and they already respond with sounds when we talk to them. They both know their names already. They are constantly racing around and wrestling. There are cat toys everywhere, and we're using the laser pointer to give them exercise. And they're both still small, around four pounds each, although they're eating a lot and almost visibly growing.

The upshot is, they're both lovely, friendly kittens and I'm sure they're going to be wonderful cats. I'm crazy about them, and so is Daniel. Adopting them was clearly the right decision. Thank you for our new family members, Animal Rescue League of [city name redacted], Pennsylvania.

9 comments:

I'm so happy the kittens are doing so well! Four pounds each! They're getting so big! Now that you mention it I don't think I've known any brown eyed cats. My cat Missy had jade green eyes (they were soooo pretty). I feel bad for poor Desmond that he didn't get enough of Mama Kitty's attention. My dog Beau did this thing where he would suck on the edge of his bed as he fell asleep and I looked it up and it was due to being weaned too early. He did it his whole life. I hope Des grows out of his thing though. You paint such a sweet portrait of their personalities! Give them pets from me!

I directed my mom to this post and she said "grey stripey kitties are my favorite" so there's that. Yeah Missy was over 20 lbs. at her peak. And shaped like a bowling ball. We got here when she was a kitten and she just grew and grew and grew and grew. She was bigger than Beau, who topped out at about 13 lbs.

Oh they're so pretty! We have two 2.5 year old shelter kitties and one still suckles on blankets once in a while. Doesn't seem to be an issue overall...so I just let it go. Her sister did the same when we first got them, but doesn't anymore. So who knows why one seemed to grow out of it and one didn't.Have fun with them!!Sooze